Business groups cheered the budget resolution that cleared the House Tuesday night after a stop-and-go vote orchestrated by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) while labor groups hurled tomatoes.
Hundreds of businesses and trade associations on Wednesday applauded the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which Republicans are trying to extend or make permanent through the legislative reconciliation process, which Tuesday’s budget resolution unlocked. Reconciliation bills can be passed with a simple majority, allowing for a party-line vote in the Senate that avoids the filibuster.
“The individual, business, and estate tax provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act ('TCJA') … should be made permanent,” the American Chemistry Council, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the Plastics Industry Association and many others wrote.
AFL-CIO labor federation president Liz Shuler said that Republicans’ tax agenda amounts to a “massive tax giveaway to giant corporations” at the expense of public food assistance and healthcare programs, which Republicans are seeking to cut.
“The Republican budget bill that the House is aiming to pass this week would slash programs like Medicaid and food assistance for children, taking away care from grandparents in nursing homes, premature babies in the NICU, and leaving kids hungry,” she wrote in a statement.
— Tobias Burns
